Exile

by Denise Mina

  ‘I’ll be fine, Leslie, don’t fuss me.’

  They stood close together, smoking and watching for signs of the driver. A gangly man wearing a blue nylon uniform sauntered casually down the side of the bus, keeping his head down, pretending not to notice the forty pairs of eyes behind the glass watching him like an aquarium of hungry piranhas. He leaned down to the side, unlocked the boot and the mob surged towards him, shoving and jostling to be first. He checked Maureen’s ticket, took her bag and threw it into the hold.

  ‘Right,’ said Leslie. ‘Take care.’

  ‘I will.’

  They hugged each other tight. Leslie backed away, stepping on to the shallow pavement in front of the glass wall as Maureen climbed on board. A different driver was waiting to double-check her ticket. He was short with a fags-and-sunbed-withered face, a jet black curly Afro perm and blindingly white false teeth. ‘On ye go,’ he said, in a strangled, nasal squeal.

  She had to wait patiently in the queue, edging up the stairs one at a time. The top deck was full of people sorting themselves into the chairs. Maureen bagsied a double seat one down from the back row and sat by the aisle, putting her paper and sweets and Coke on the seat by the window. She had learned that the best method for keeping a double seat was to look more obnoxious and unwelcoming than anyone else. She pretended to read her paper, sticking her elbows across the arm-rests, refusing to look at anyone coming up the stairs. The crowd outside the window diminished as the passengers filtered on to the bus, the aisle emptied and the passengers settled. Maureen was beginning to think she’d get the double seat to herself. Leslie stood on the pavement, watching her, looking very small and far away. She waved and Maureen waved back.

  A mob of cheery drunk men appeared at the side of the bus, flinging their bags at the driver and piling in through the door. They climbed the stairs with difficulty, pulling at each other and laughing. The first man up the stairs spotted the empty back seat. ‘Look, boys,’ he shouted, ‘the very dab.’

  They fell up the aisle in a haze of stale smoke and beer, taking up the back row behind Maureen, tugging their jackets off and congratulating each other on their den. They were almost settled when a dishevelled wee man emerged from the stairwell. He was a good fifteen years older than the rest of them and wore thick specs and a dirty yellow anorak zipped up tight at the neck. He looked around, spotted his pals on the back seat and cursed. ‘D’yees no’ save a seat for me?’

  Behind Maureen’s head the men jeered at him, telling him to sit down.

  ‘Cunts,’ he said, spotting Maureen’s precious extra seat. He stood next to her, waiting for her to move. Maureen sighed and stood up, moving over to the window, sitting the sweets and Coke on her lap. The man aimed his body and fell into the seat, landing heavily and clearing his throat. ‘Right, hen?’ he asked the head-rest in front of him. He turned and squared up to her, making a small, defensive mouth. The lenses on his glasses were so thick they distorted his eyes into tiny things, a blurry mess of blue and red and crumbs. ‘Are ye no’ fucking talking tae me? Too good fur me, is it?’

  A bald man shoved his face between the head-rests behind her. ‘Jokey,’ he said, ‘shut it.’

  Jokey looked around the bus indignantly. He coughed and nonchalantly scratched his bollocks.

  ‘Don’t worry, hen,’ the bald man said to Maureen, ‘he’ll be sleeping in a minute.’

  Maureen was looking at a long night of Jokey snoring and dribbling, with nothing to comfort her but a bottle of Coke and a bag of chocolate toffees. Leslie waved from the pavement again and Maureen waved back at her. A speaker above the stairs crackled to life and the Afro’d driver spoke, sounding bored and telling them that they were in Glasgow but were going to London. He must have been doing the job for a long time because he had anticipated all their tricks. ‘There will be no smoking on this journey,’ he said. ‘There will be no drinking.’ The back-seat gang interrupted the announcement to cheer the mention of drink. ‘There will be no fighting.’ They cheered louder. ‘Passengers are informed that they must keep their feet and bags out of the aisle at all times.’ The men hoorayed and whistled. ‘Anyone found to be breaking these rules,’ continued the driver, ‘will be put off the bus at the side of the motorway and left there.’

  The men stopped cheering.

  ‘We will be stopping at the Knutsford services at three thirty a.m. for refreshments. We will be leaving the Knutsford services at three fifty a.m. Any passengers not on board will be left behind. A member of the team will shortly be coming around to serve you tea, coffee and sandwiches. We hope you enjoy your journey with Caledonia Buses.’

  The tannoy crackled to a stop and a frightened silence fell over the top deck.

  ‘He’s a bit fucking harsh, isn’t he?’ whispered the bald guy.

  The engine spluttered to life, sending rolling bug-a-lug vibrations through the windows and seats. Leslie waved conscientiously from the pavement as the bus backed out of the loading bay and into the street.

  Maureen was looking calmly out of the window, chewing the first chocolate toffee of the night, when she saw him. Vik was striding up the road to the bus station, his leather coat flapping open, checking his watch and walking fast. He had come to see her off. Maureen stood up, forgetting herself and dropping the bag of sweets to the floor. She banged her fists on the window and shouted, ‘Oi,’ but he didn’t see her. She banged harder, turning, her eyes fixed on him as the bus sped away up Cathedral Street. He was a little liquorice strip on the pavement and the bus station receded to a strip of light below a black hanging sky. Vik had come to see her off. The bald man stuck his face through the head-rests again. ‘I know,’ he said, smiling kindly, ‘I hate they Pakis too.’

  ‘He’s my boyfriend,’ said Maureen.

  Uncomfortable at his faux pas, the bald man sat back in his chair and puffed out his chest. ‘Aye, very good anyway,’ he told his sniggering pals, ‘I was just trying to be nice.’

  The road was clear. The bus rumbled through Blackhill, passing the chimneys of Barlinnie prison. They passed the fire-blackened flats of Easterhouse, boarded up with fibreglass, and the driver dimmed the lights to let the passengers sleep. A hush fell over the cabin as the lights slipped past the window. They turned south at the Crosshill Junction, a knot of lanes and slip-roads in a bed of gentle hills. A spired church and cemetery sat on a summit, an angular protestation against the soft, snow-covered countryside. Vik had come to see her off.

  As the bus warmed up Jokey began to give off a strange smell, like dirty hair and stale cheese mixed together. He was fighting sleep, nodding off and jerking awake again. After one particularly vigorous convulsion he turned around in the aisle and shouted, ‘Cunts,’ at the men in the back seat. The bald man reached his hand through the headrests and patted Jokey’s shoulder. ‘Steady, Tiger,’ he said, and Jokey surrendered to sleep, nuzzling his elbow into Maureen’s soft side.

  The driver who had packed her bag into the boot came up the shuddering stairs offering sandwiches and taking orders for cups of tea. Someone on the top deck started playing with a Game Boy, Maureen could hear the tingling, mindless tune. She realized suddenly that the music was coming from her pocket. She took out her pager, nervous that it might wake Jokey.

  Message is

  hope you are

  well lot*

  of love Leslie

  She had been working her way through the sweets and reading the paper for an hour or so before the smell of Jokey became so distracting that she gave up. She looked out of the window at the dark countryside. They were crawling uphill, out of a deep glen. They were so high that Maureen lost perspective but then the wind shook the windows and scattered the mist below. An old drover’s road appeared below them, paralleling the burn, a wavy pencil line through the foot of the hills. At the mouth of the glen stood an abandoned cottage, souvenir of a wild and lonely time. Vik had come to see her off but
she was glad he had been too late. She wouldn’t have known what to tell him. She was on the edge of her life, trapped on the spur by all the big questions.

  She leaned her head on the vibrating window and thought of Ann standing in a cold office in her underwear, letting a stranger take pictures of her tired body, bruised and battered by the want of drink, as if her addiction was trying to scratch through her skin.

  The announcement and the rush of cold air from the stairwell woke her up. The bus had stopped in a car-park. Hidden behind the rows of freight lorries were the bright lights of a service station. Jokey’s pals woke him up and told him to come on. His smell had accumulated in his anorak while he slept and as he reached up for the back of the chair the stench escaped through the sealed neck in an ardent gust. Maureen waited until he was well down the stairs before getting up herself, stretching her stiff legs and running her tongue over her fur-coated teeth.

  The cold was a shock after the nuzzled warmth on the top deck. She lit a fag in the windy car-park and followed the stream of passengers to the service station. The backseat men headed to the restaurant for hot food with Jokey at their heels. Maureen went to the newsagent’s, looking for something to buy. The sandwiches cost a fiver and the crisps only came in ludicrously big bags but she was in a shop in the middle of the night and felt she had to buy something. She chose an A–Z of London and a spiralbound notepad to write things on. She went back to the bus, smoking another fag as she strolled across the windy carpark, looking out for the nice driver, the one who had packed her bag in the boot. She checked the cab but he wasn’t there so she scouted around the bus and found him hiding in the dark shadows at the back, smoking. He nodded to her briefly, trying to shake her off. ‘How are ye?’ she asked, smiling.

  ‘Aye,’ he said, and went back to kicking the dirt.

  ‘Can I show ye a photo of someone?’

  The driver was intrigued. ‘What for?’

  ‘My pal went missing and I think she took this bus.’

  ‘Ah, well now,’ he looked wary, ‘we get a lot of people on the buses, ye know.’

  Maureen took out the photocopy of Ann’s face, holding it up in front of the driver so that it caught the light from inside the bus cab. He looked at it for a moment. ‘She had yellow hair and a red face,’ said Maureen. ‘Smelt of drink, a bit.’

  He looked at the picture and was surprised that he remembered her. ‘That’s amazing,’ he said. ‘Up and down she was, just before Christmas.’

  ‘Up and down?’

  ‘I seen her a few times. I remember because she was up and down every few days and sometimes she’d keep her bag on her knee, a big bag.’ He drew a one-foot square in front of him with his fag-free hand. ‘When did ye last see her?’

  ‘Months ago,’ he said. ‘Start of December. I remember because she was on the way up and got off the bus for the break and never got back on again.’

  ‘She got left at this service station?’

  ‘Aye, well, across the road.’ He pointed to a covered walkway bridging the motorway. ‘Was she just too late?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ he said, wanting to be alone in the dark with his cigarette.

  Aware that she was running short of time, Maureen fumbled the Polaroid out of her pocket, ‘Did ye ever see this guy with her?’

  The driver shrugged, looking at the picture, getting impatient. ‘I wouldn’t know, hen.’

  ‘Listen, thanks,’ said Maureen. ‘Thanks a lot.’ She backed off, leaving him to his break, and climbed the stairs into the cab feeling elated. Liam had been right. Ann was up and down and she might have been running for the loan sharks, she might have been running for Hutton. But if she was running for loan sharks she would only have carried the bag one way, not up and down again. She stretched out, enjoying the whole of her seat while she could, before Jokey came back.

  The engine started softly, shaking her awake. She opened her eyes to see Jokey falling into his seat like a malodorous avalanche in an anorak. They were pulling out of the service station, leaving the big lorries and the bright lights and sliding along the slip-road on to the quiet carriageway.

  It was five a.m. and the grey monochrome was broken only by the red tail-lights of overtaking cars. The land was very flat: they were in the middle of a plain so vast the edges were beyond the horizon. Farmhouses and tiny hamlets flashed by. They passed a small set of horse jumps in a paddock and then sudden banks of the motorway came up, enclosing the road. They passed a village, then through a town and into the country again. The towns began to blend together, meeting at their thinning outer edges, closer and closer until they were tumbling over one another, houses and houses and houses blanketing the shallow hills.

  They left the motorway, following the broad road to the city, passing through Swiss Cottage. Houses gave way to small blocks of flats and the small blocks to bigger blocks to high-rises to massive glass and steel offices. The clumsy bus rattled through the dark city, stopping at lights and rumbling across roundabouts. They pulled slowly into King’s Cross, stopping by the great blind arches of St Pancras. The Afro’d driver spoke over the Tannoy, telling them they were in London, so get off and thank you.

  The bus emptied quickly. A crowd gathered by the boot while the other driver pulled out the bags and sat them on the pavement. Maureen lit a well-deserved cigarette, enjoying the feel of Vik’s chrome lighter in the palm of her hand. She took off her jersey and rolled it up, pulling her overcoat out of the poly-bag, unravelling it and slipping it on. It didn’t seem very cold, a little frosty, but not like winter at all. She spotted her cycle bag being thrown on to the pavement and stepped over a couple of suitcases to get to it. She waited until everyone else had claimed their baggage before she cornered the driver again. ‘See about that girl . . .’ The driver looked up at her. His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked exhausted. ‘Look,’ he said, slamming the boot shut and locking it, ‘I cannae mind the guy.’

  ‘You look knackered,’ she said, and offered him a fag. He took one and she lit it for him. ‘No, I just wanted to ask about her bag. Did she always have it with her? Could she have just had it with her on the way down?’ The tired man exhaled. ‘She put it in the boot sometimes.’

  ‘Was it when she was going home or coming here?’ The driver took a draw and looked at the tip, frowning and trying to remember. ‘Now ye say that, I think it was just the one way,’ he looked up at her, ‘but I cannae remember which.’

  ‘Did ye have an unclaimed bag left in the boot in Glasgow,’ prompted Maureen, ‘the last time, the time she got left behind at the service station?’

  The driver smiled at his fag and nodded. ‘On the way up,’ he said. ‘She kept it on her lap on the way up.’

  27

  Indifference

  It was half past seven in the morning and King’s Cross was already gridlocked. Cars and buses on the Euston Road were jammed up close and exhaust fumes hovered over the stodgy traffic like smoke in a night-club. Across the road the Underground entrance hoovered streams of pedestrians off the pavement. Maureen realized that, for the first time in months, she was walking with her head up because the weather was so mild and Michael wasn’t here and Vik had come to see her off.

  She crossed at the lights heading for the tube. At the foot of the stairs stood a filthy old man with one agate eye. He smiled beatifically up at the ferocious river of badtempered people, enjoying the warm stream of heat from the vents, peeling an orange with one hand, his other arm cramped into his waist, his hand puckered and paralysed by a stroke. The torrent of commuters bustled past him, swinging to the far side of the tunnel to avoid even seeing him, rendering him invisible with their indifference.

  It was oppressively warm downstairs. By the time Maureen arrived on the southbound platform the sweat was running down her back. After a gentle backdraft, a welcome cool breeze whispered from the tunnel. The crush of people shifted, looking to the
left as a train clattered into the station. The passengers clotted around the opening doors, pushing from the back, shoving on to the train before the disembarking passengers could get off. The doors shut behind her, skimming Maureen’s bag, and the train took off with a jolt.

  Inside the carriage the commuters and tourists pressed tightly against each other, valiantly defending the fiction of unconnectedness. Those standing looked covetously at the seated. The seated looked relaxed and happy, reading books or staring contentedly into the crotch of the person standing in front of them. A Norwegian tourist shared an indignant observation with his companion, who agreed. Maureen wondered about Ann carrying up to Glasgow, wondering whether it meant anything. She couldn’t think straight, her eyes burned hot and tired, and more than anything she wanted a wash and a sleep. Her coat was far too heavy, she was sweating into the gorgeous silky lining, straining a muscle on her side trying to reach the bar on the ceiling. The train stopped at a station and a fresh set of tired commuters, wearing their office best, clambered into the carriage.

  The train was cooler than the Underground and brought her to Blackheath station. She followed the directions Sarah had given her, turning right out of the station, following the steep road up the hill and taking the left-hand fork. Blackheath was postcard pretty. The low shops had big bow windows with inappropriate red sale banners plastered across them. She walked on until she came to the corner of the heath. Restrained colonnades of high Georgian houses faced on to an extravaganza of empty land, which came to a little hill in the middle, like a pseudo-horizon, as if the grassy land was as infinite as the empire. Sarah Simmons lived in Grote’s Place, one street back from the heath.

  Maureen trotted up the stairs to number three but couldn’t find a doorbell. She knocked with the heavy brass knob, heard the clip-clop of court shoes on stone, and the door opened. Sarah was dressed for work in a white blouse, navy blue skirt and matching tights and shoes. She looked Maureen over, took in her expensive overcoat, her cheap trainers and her heavy bag. ‘Hello, hello, Maureen,’ said Sarah, drawing it out as if she’d have nothing to say when the greeting was over. ‘How are you?’